The 16-year-old from Chennai fought back to win the set after having lost the opener, but then lost the two-game blitz tie-breaker.
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Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandha went down fighting to world No. 2 Ding Liren in the tie-break of the Meltwater Champions Chess tour chessable Masters 2022 online tournament final early on Friday. The teenager from Chennai fought back to win the set after having lost the opener, but then lost the two-game blitz tie-breaker. He had lost the first set 1.5-2.5, hit back to win the second 2.5-1.5 and force the blitz tie-break. The 29-year-old Liren used his experience to trump Praggnanandhaa in the second of the tie-break games. After the blitz game ended in stalemate, the Chinese player won the next in 49 moves to upset the Indian teenager’s hopoes.
Indian Grandmaster #Praggnanandhaa lost to China’s Ding Liren in the final of #ChessableMasters pic.twitter.com/cY3fBKnHBq
— Doordarshan Sports (@ddsportschannel) May 27, 2022
The Indian needed to win the second set to take the game to the tie-break and he did just that in 79 moves. The next game was a neck-and-neck affair which saw the two dish out a 106-move draw before another stalemate meant the title would be decided by the tie-breaker. The Indian GM had defeated Dutchman Anish Giri in the semi-final to become the first Indian player to reach the final of a Meltwater Champions Chess Tour event. Meanwhile he also has world No.1 Magnus Carlsen for a second time during the preliminary phase in which he finished fourth and got past Wei Yi of China in the quarter-finals.
The Chessable Masters online tournament is a 9-month long series, featuring some of the world’s top players, who play for a prize money pool of USD 1.6 million. The tour started on February 19, 2022 and will run until November 20, 2022. The Chessable Masters is the leg 4 of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour. The overall Tour winner in November will be crowned the world’s best online chess player. There are 9 tournaments in the Meltwater Champions chess Tour, 6 labelled as Regular and 3 labelled as Major. The Chessable Masters running from May 19-26, is a regular tournament.
